Content Option for backing up your books yourself

[robins777]

I do an incremental backup of my PC data every day and as part of that I connect my Kindle and that is backed up automatically.

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I think there is something to be said for a periodic 'full backup'. The main purpose would be to more easily restore the state of your Kindle in the event that a system reset is required. But it would also backup any annotations/bookmarks that you have created for non-Amazon content. These are not backed up with your Amazon account, Calibre doesn't store those files, and Carbonite won't back them up either unless they are on your PC somewhere.

And you'd also be able to strip DRM if it came down to that.

Not necessarily.

Unless something has changed recently that I am not aware of - If the only copy of an eBook you have is one DRM'd for a Kindle with a firmware 2.5 or higher and the books are no longer available to you to re-download from the archives, as of right now you would not be able to strip the DRM.

So I'll repeat again to everybody, especially in light of the events the past week. I personally don't feel comfortable buying any book from anywhere and not immediately taking steps to certify that my book will always be available for me to read on any future device - regardless to what kind of cloud back-up that retailer claims to provide.

And anybody who asks me for advice on eBook buying, that is what I teach them. Right down to grabbing their laptops and showing them how to Calibre and archive.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by abookreader

Unless something has changed recently that I am not aware of - If the only copy of an eBook you have is one DRM'd for a Kindle with a firmware 2.5 or higher and the books are no longer available to you to re-download from the archives, as of right now you would not be able to strip the DRM.

This is absolutely correct.

I'm not advocating DRM removal (nor am I condemning it), but backing up your ebooks with the attitude that "I can always remove the DRM later" is not the way to go. If you have any intention of removing DRM (at any time), you should do it immediately rather than later. Things change.

Backing up the files (the actual files from the device itself) will only protect you from losing a book that was removed from your Amazon archive. If your Kindle breaks (and you didn't remove the DRM from your books), that backup you have won't help you a bit in putting the files back on your new Kindle. You'd still be stuck with relying on Amazon's archive to get your old books on your new Kindle.

[FF2]

I guess I will have to bite the bullet and try to figure out the topaz "backup" (ahem) method real soon now.